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Bush Launches Iraq Endgame
Source: News.scotsman.comThe United States last night lit the fuse for military action against Saddam Hussein when Colin Powell formally declared Iraq was in "material breach" of the United Nations resolution on disarmament. They save Powell for that kind of occasion... In a move that signalled the beginning of a countdown to war in the new year, Mr Powell, the US secretary of state, warned the world "would not wait forever" for Iraq to comply with the demands of the UN for a complete inventory of its nuclear, chemical and biological arsenal. Senior White House officials last night conceded that the president, George Bush, was "ramping up" towards a second Gulf war. The president is not likely to decide whether to go to war until late January or early February, an official said, and will use the time until then to bolster his case against Saddam. And to figure if the job can be done without using an invasion force... Mr Powell, who has re-established himself as the member of the White Houseâs inner circle who speaks most closely for the president, delivered his uncompromising statement following a damning initial assessment by Hans Blix, the chief UN weapons inspector, who said the 12,000-page Iraqi weapons declaration contained "inconsistencies" and left "many questions unanswered". Powell was never out of the inner circle. He's the "good cop" to Rumsfeld's "bad cop." The people who periodically call Bush a moron are too stupid to figure that out. Mr Powell went further, saying US experts had found the declaration to be "a catalogue of recycled information and flagrant omissions" and "anything but full or complete". He added: "The Iraqi declaration ... totally fails to meet the resolutionâs requirements. These are material omissions that, in our view, constitute another material breach. We are disappointed, we are not deceived." It's the kind of horse maneuvers that've worked in the past — the kind that Bush said wouldn't work this time. Let's see what happens next... Posted by: Fred Pruitt 2002-12-20 |
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